by Iris Danbury
THE WINDMILL OF KALAKOS
Iris Danbury
When Jacynth first went to Rhodes to work for Mallory Brandon she found him stern and difficult to please.
But when they gradually developed a more amicable relationship, Jacynth wished he needed her as a person, not just as an efficient secretary!
CHAPTER ONE
It was not an auspicious beginning to a new job, thought Jacynth. She had just arrived at Athens only to find that she had missed the connecting plane to Rhodes. As she moved away from the information desk a young man at her elbow queried, “Did they tell you the time of the next plane to Rhodes?”
“Yes. Eight-thirty tomorrow morning.”
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed, glancing at his watch. “That’s a wait of nearly nine hours. It’s barely midnight yet. Well, I don’t fancy spending all that time here in the airport. Are you English?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s introduce ourselves. I’m Raymond Gurney, known as Ray to my friends. I noticed you on the plane from London. You sat just in front of me, so that makes us fellow-passengers.”
When Jacynth made no reply, he continued, “How about joining up with me and we’ll go into Athens for a meal and while away some of the long night.”
Jacynth shook her head. She had heard about men—or women, for that matter—who scraped acquaintance with girls at airports and hustled them off with the promise of dazzling jobs and prospects, jobs that often turned out to be very dubious indeed. Certainly the young man looked English enough, with pleasant features, blue eyes and mid-brown hair.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gurney,” she said gently, “but I think I’d better wait here. Besides, won’t most of the restaurants be closed by now?”
Mr. Gurney frowned. “Closed? Not for hours yet. I’ve been to Athens before and I know places—quite respectable ones—that keep open much later than this.”
She picked up her overnight bag and half turned away. “Sorry,” she said, with a smile, and began to walk away.
“I can see that you’re not too keen on going off to the city with a complete stranger.” He had caught up with her in a matter of seconds. “But I assure you that I’ll take care of you and bring you back here in time for the plane. After all, I want to catch it myself.” He fumbled in his jacket pocket. “Look, here’s my passport. I live in Bristol with my parents and I work for a firm of importers. I’m on a business trip to Rhodes.”
“So am I,” Jacynth returned crisply. “I’m already delayed and it’s very important for me to arrive in Rhodes as soon as possible. I couldn’t risk losing the first available flight.”
Raymond Gurney shrugged. “Oh, well then, we’d better stay here for this interminable wait.”
“But I’m not stopping you from going into Athens,” she protested, “or indeed anywhere else.”
He laughed amiably. “One of the nicest brush-offs I’ve ever received! But I couldn’t go away and leave you here alone at the mercy of any roving eye that comes along.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “Roving eye!” she echoed. “What would you call yours?”
“Doesn’t apply to me. We’re compatriots in a foreign land. Of course I couldn’t leave you.”
He was certainly persistent, she thought. The prospect of dozing oh settees in the airport lounge was not inviting and an English-speaking companion might make the long hours of the night pass more quickly.
“Well, don’t blame me if you regret not going into Athens for a more lively time.”
“I’m sure I shan’t find the time hang heavily,” he assured her with an appreciative look at the girl in front of him. Medium height, blonde hair tied back with a ribbon, candid blue eyes and the fine, smooth skin that proclaimed her English nationality.
“You still haven’t told me your name,” he reminded her.
“Miss Rowan. Jacynth Rowan.”
He grinned. “Actually I saw the label on your bag, but I wanted you to tell me. Shall we see if the restaurant here can offer anything?”
Dinner had been served on the plane from London, but Jacynth remembered how long it would be before the next meal and accompanied Mr. Gurney towards the bar.
“Coffee?” he queried. “Or do you prefer something else?”
“No. Coffee, please.” She moved along the counter and selected a couple of cakes.
When he brought the coffees and sat down at a small table he said, “You’re on a business trip, you said. In Rhodes?”
“Yes. I’ve been sent on a special job for one of the directors of the London firm I work for.”
“Oh? Sounds interesting. What sort of line? Hotels? Property?”
“Something of the sort,” she murmured evasively. She thought it indiscreet to divulge too much information to this casual stranger, however honest he might be. In fact, she was still quite vague as to the exact nature of the job she had accepted. All she had been told was that Mr. Mallory Brendon needed a secretary immediately. Her chief had warned her, “Mr. Brendon isn’t a particularly easy man to work for, but I’m sure that you, Miss Rowan, will be able to cope. I understand that the island of Rhodes is delightful, especially during the spring and summer, and you should be able to enjoy yourself there when you have free time.”
Jacynth had hesitated, although the chance to go abroad for a few months was tempting. At that time, she had strong reasons for wanting to stay in London.
“And what brings you on business to Rhodes?” she asked now of her companion. “Or is it hush-hush?”
“Oh, my firm is a small one. They import all kinds of fancy goods. Pottery, rugs, embroidered articles—all that kind of thing from Greece generally. Different goods from other countries, of course.”
“And you travel around selecting and buying?”
He smiled in a deprecating way. “Oh, I don’t do all the Continent. My seniors do most of that, but I’ve been sent on a second trip to Greece. The first time I came because one of the directors was ill and it seems that I was not too much of a flop, so they’ve let me come again.”
“Do you visit other islands apart from Rhodes as well as the mainland?”
“Crete, Corfu and some of the smaller ones.”
He told her about some of the interesting places he had visited. “I haven’t had time usually to go to the excavations and see the antiquities, except the Acropolis in Athens.”
“Yes, I would love to roam around that part,” she murmured.
“You should have insisted on staying several days in Athens before going over to Rhodes.”
She laughed. “In my firm we don’t usually insist. Plans are made and we fall in with them.”
The hours passed and after more coffees to ward off sleepiness, Jacynth and her new friend returned to the airport lounge in search of comfortable settees.
“If you’d like to stretch out and doze off,” Mr. Gurney suggested, “I’ll be here all the time.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gurney. I do feel rather sleepy now.”
“Please call me Ray—not this formal ‘Mr.’.”
“All right, then. Good night, Ray.”
“I’ll wake you in time for the next plane. Don’t worry.”
She made a pillow of her fur jacket and was almost immediately asleep. It seemed only a few minutes when someone was rousing her and a voice said, “Wake up, Jacynth. We must check in soon, but we’ve time for breakfast first.”
She struggled to a sitting position and glanced at her watch. Nearly eight o’clock. She went to the washroom and freshened herself before rejoining Ray, who had already secured some rolls and butter and steaming coffee.
“Give me your air ticket and I’ll go and get our boarding cards,” he suggested.
“Wrong airport?” she echoed.
“Yes. This is the international one. Our plane goes from the domestic one. Stupid of me to forget that.”
She swallowed the hot coffee, nearly choking herself. “But what about our luggage?” she asked, as she followed him outside.
“That’s all right. They’d take that over there already. Got everything?”
She nodded as she entered the taxi. “I’m sorry about this, Jacynth.”
“All I hope is that we don’t lose that plane,” she muttered.
“Oh, we shall be in time, don’t worry,” Ray said airily.
But that was a false prophecy, for by the time they had secured their boarding cards and gone through passport control, the eight-thirty plane for Rhodes was already moving along the runway.
Jacynth stared at the plane, appalled. “It’s gone!” she said inanely.
“Oh, dear! That’s torn it,” was Ray’s comment.
“Well, what time is the next? Don’t tell me I’ve got to go another day.” She knew she spoke sharply, but she was near to tears, blaming herself for such careless mismanagement.
“I’ll find out.”
The next was at midday. “Then I must make sure I’m on it,” she said decisively. “It may not matter what time you arrive, but I’m expected to be punctual, although it wasn’t my fault that last night’s flight was upset.”
She curbed the impulse to blame him. After all, he said he had flown before to the island and he could have remembered about the change of airport.
So it was late afternoon when eventually Jacynth touched down at Rhodes.
“Have you far to go?” asked Ray, by now a very subdued young man, anxious to atone for his earlier mistakes.
“I have the address,” she told him. “Goodbye, Mr. Gurney. Thank you for your—company.”
He grinned in a crestfallen way. “Sorry I upset your plans in the end. Perhaps we shall meet again in Rhodes? Here’s the name of my hotel and telephone number. He handed her a slip of paper. “Anyway, I wish you good luck in your new job. Hope it comes up to your wildest dreams.”
She gave him a conventional smile and waved as the taxi took her out of sight of his slightly worried face. She was more than worried, too. Here she was arriving practically a whole day later than scheduled, there had been further unforeseen delay in tracing her suitcases which had arrived on the earlier plane and been stacked in some obscure corner, and now the taxi-driver was unsure of her destination.
“Kalakos?” he yelled over his shoulder. “Near the sea?”
“I’ve no idea,” she replied, but his English was limited and she repeated slowly, “I do not know.” Then it occurred to her to rummage in her handbag for the Greek phrase book and eventually she found the words, “then ksero”—I don’t know. But that hardly advanced anyone any further.
“First time here,” she told him, hoping he would at least understand that she could not help him.
He drove slowly along a coast road. Large modern hotels with swimming pools had sprung up in recent years on the fringe of the town of Rhodes. In between were small square houses, remnants of the villages which had been swept away.
“Kalakos is village?” the driver asked again.
“No. I think a large house. A villa.”
He grunted and drove on, eventually stopping at a cafe to ask directions. Finally he pulled up outside a small gate set in massive iron railings that apparently enclosed a garden.
“Villa Kalakos,” he said as he unloaded her suitcases, pushed open the gate and carried the luggage up to the house. She paid the fare, added a reasonable tip and waited on the wide stone steps of the villa under a massive pillared porch.
A knocker shaped like a woman’s hand ornamented the heavy wooden door and Jacynth rapped several times. Surely she had come to the right address after all? She walked round the side of the villa to the back and shouted, “Hallo, there!” An emaciated-looking tabby cat shot out of the bushes and streaked across the path. Suddenly a woman opened a window and peered out, shook her fist at Jacynth, evidently telling her to go away.
“But I’m expected. My name is Rowan—Miss Rowan. I’m from England.”
The woman shrugged and snapped the window shut.
Jacynth stood for a moment completely nonplussed. This was a fine reception! She returned to the front door. Perhaps the woman thought she was an intruder, trying to steal something.
Now Jacynth found a large black knob at the side of the front door and two or three strong pulls sent a reverberating clangour through the house. A man opened the door and Jacynth walked in quickly before he could shut the door in her face.
She repeated again her name, then thought to add that she had come to work for Mr. Mallory Brendon. Although most of her sentence was apparently unintelligible to the man, the name “Mallory Brendon” evidently registered.
He indicated that she should wait in a small side room off the spacious hall. Jacynth imagined that he had gone to tell Mr. Brendon that she had arrived, but after half an hour nothing happened.
She glanced around the room, furnished in ornate Italian style, cluttered with tables and chairs, a couple of small settees, footstools, table lamps and vases, a bureau-bookcase and an empty birdcage.
Once or twice she peered out into the hall where savoury smells of cooking tantalised her, for she had eaten very little during the day and was now extremely hungry.
How much longer was she to be kept waiting? If only someone would give her some food! At six o’clock she decided to find the kitchen where possibly the man and woman she had seen might be preparing a meal.
As she reached the door, it was thrust open and a tall man entered.
“Who are you?” he asked in English,
“I’m Jacynth Rowan.”
“And what are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you, I think, if you’re Mr. Brendon. I’ve just arrived from London.”
“From the Palmerston company?”
“Yes.”
“But, dammit, you’re the wrong girl. I specially asked for Miss Osborn and—”
“Miss Osborn was married a few weeks ago,” she told him.
“Well, what difference does that make?” he demanded.
“Only that she’s gone with her husband to Canada.”
“I see.”
Jacynth could not restrain the small spurt of satisfaction when she saw that Mr. Brendon was slightly deflated by this news.
“And they sent you instead?”
“Yes. Didn’t the company tell you?” she asked.
“Of course not, or I shouldn’t be standing here asking questions. Well, let’s have a look at you.”
Jacynth withstood his scrutiny and herself had time to note his tanned face, the dark eyes and bristling eyebrows.
His lips tightened as he said, “You’re not in the least suitable.”
“Not suitable? But—” Jacynth almost reeled under this blow.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty. Nearly twenty-one. I assure you, Mr. Brendon, that I’m reasonably capable and efficient.”
“Know any Greek?”
“No.”
“That’s another drawback,” he muttered.
She wondered what other drawbacks he had already found in her.
“I’m sorry about that, but I didn’t know I was coming here until a few days ago.”
“And you were expected last night. What happened to you?”
“The London plane was late and the connection to Rhodes had already left,” she explained. “So I spent the night in the airport and this morning we didn’t realise that we had to fly from a different—”
“We? Who accompanied you?”
Jacynth flushed. “There was a young Englishman who was also coming here and—”
“So you picked up some casual companion in a f
oreign airport.”
His mouth had set into a thin, disgusted line.
“He was only someone to talk to,” she muttered.
Now he took several strides about the room, although his progress was limited by the cluttered furniture.
“Unsuitable, indeed! I suppose it’s what one must expect nowadays from all you girls. All you think of is pleasure.”
He had not even had the courtesy to ask her to sit down and now she fumbled for the nearest chair and sank into it.
“I’ve not had much pleasure today,” she said in what she thought was a reasonable tone of voice. “I’m tired—and hungry, and if I don’t soon have something to eat, I shall faint.”
For a fleeting moment his dark eyes held a flash of sympathy, but his brusque manner soon returned. “For heaven’s sake don’t start fainting here. Are you delicate and subject to these fainting fits?”
“No. I’m strong as a horse.” She could not keep out the sarcasm in her voice. “But even horses need to eat sometimes.” Perhaps it was her fancy or she was already lightheaded, but was there the ghost of a smile around his mouth?
“I’ll see that you have a meal at once.”
She longed to be shown to her room and have a chance to wash and tidy herself, but if she suggested the idea, this overbearing man would immediately assume that she was not as hungry as she pretended.
“You’d better follow me,” he said. As he held the door open for her she stumbled, slightly and knocked against a small table. A vase with dried grasses went flying, although she tried to save it.
Aware that her face had gone scarlet, she mumbled an apology.
“No matter,” he snapped. He paused to pick up the vase, which was not broken, although the grasses had scattered over the carpet.
He now showed her into a small sitting room on the other side of the hall. “I’ll send Caterina to you.” He shut the door and again she was alone. In a few moments the woman she had already seen came in with a cloth and cutlery and proceeded to lay a table. She did not speak, but regarded Jacynth with dark, sullen looks.
Eventually she brought a bowl of soup, followed by a dish of meat and vegetables, and afterwards cheese and fruit. The girl hardly cared what she was eating as long as it satisfied those awful pangs of hunger.